For Starlog, Gross specialized in tracking down and interviewing the more peripheral contributors to the franchise, such as guest actors, directors, and writers, as well as lesser known production staffers, that were rarely, if at all referred to in other, later publications covering the franchise. Building upon the knowledge and experience garnered there he started writing his unlicensed reference books, most of them in cooperation with Mark A. Altman. In them he expanded upon the interviews he had done with said contributors, resulting in point of view works that were somewhat outside the more "political correct" ones utilized in the officially licensed works of, for example, Pocket Books. Interviewees, long outside the purview of official studio policies, often felt free to proffer a more critical view on the production of Star Trek and the studio policies surrounding them.